Ancient Aliens on the Moon

by Mike Bara

  Data’s Head

  “Mr. Data, your head is not an artifact.”

  – Commander Riker, from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Time’s Arrow.”

  I still distinctly remember the first time Richard C. Hoagland showed me the picture of “Data’s Head.” I don’t think I will ever forget it. I was sitting on the couch of his office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, looking at some images he was showing on a big blank wall with a projector. This was the last of several “Dark Mission” summits we’d had to settle on the contents of that book in 2006, and I was anxious to get back to my home in Los Angeles, not the least of which was because L.A. has two things Albuquerque does not; moisture and oxygen. I was tired, cranky, and ready to get to bed. “Don’t be so restless,” he said mysteriously. “I’ve got one more thing to show you.”

  Yeah.

  There, slowly but surely, building the tension in the way that only he can, he took me through some of the data that you have just seen and read. Then we began to focus in on the last major stop of EVA-2, Shorty crater.

  Along the way to Shorty Crater, a black, halo-rimmed volcanic crater on the outskirts of the light mantle material from the South Massif avalanche, Schmitt and Cernan stopped to take some samples along the rim of another small crater, which came to be known as “Ballet Crater.” It was thus dubbed because Schmitt had taken an exceptionally entertaining spill there while trying to retrieve some sample bags. The stop, which was supposed to last twenty minutes, was made to take a double core sample, get a gravimeter reading, and take some photographic pans of the general area (again, notice that Nansen seems to be the only stop on EVA-2 that what not photographed in extensive detail, at least officially). It took nearly thirty-seven minutes for the astronauts to complete their tasks at Ballet Crater, and from there it was straight on to Shorty, which was a primary stop for the EVA along with Nansen. Upon arrival at Shorty, the astronauts took care of some housekeeping chores, and then got their first look at the crater itself. In looking at the transcript of EVA-2, what they saw apparently astounded them:

  145:22:22, Schmitt: “Shorty is a crater, the size of which you know. It’s obviously darker rimmed, although the fragment population for most of the blanket does not seem too different than the light mantle. But inside… Whoo, whoo, whoo!”

  Schmitt’s description seemed to imply that while Shorty was relatively unspectacular on the outside, the area inside the crater was, at the least, very interesting. Unfortunately, when the camera started up, it was pointed at the distant South Massif. It stayed positioned there as Schmitt moved away to take a panorama of the crater. Later, Cernan took a panorama of the entirety of Shorty crater (NASA frames AS17-137-20991 to 21027).

  My first mind-blowing moment was when Richard showed me his color enhancement of Cernan’s panorama. It was filled with stunning colors; blues, purples, pinks and greens, yet the white of the space-suited astronauts were pure white. It was then that he told me of his theory of light bending prismatic effects of the glass-like ruins overhead. I was even more stunned when I saw the famous orange soil that Cernan had spotted.

  The orange soil turned out to be highly oxidized titanium, but it was nothing compared to what he showed me next inside the crater itself. I could instantly see what had made Schmitt so excited when he first looked down into Shorty. Rather than the normal looking rocks, boulders and debris I had been expecting, my engineers eye immediately focused on objects inside the rim of the 100-yard-wide crater that were quite obviously mechanical in origin.

  Black and white version of NASA frame AS17-137-20990, showing the heavily oxidized orange soil near Shorty crater.

  Mechanical objects have certain features and tell-tale design aspects that clearly differentiate them from rocks and other random forms of nature. These include flanges, opposable handles, vents, heat sinks and all manner of connecting hoses, tubes and fixtures. These types of objects, these mere “rocks,” as NASA would claim, were scattered all over the inside of Shorty crater. Most of them had clear (to my eye at least) mechanical features, fixtures and functions. We have a guiding principal in engineering design, which we call the “3 Fs,” Form, Fit, and Function. If whatever you are adding to a part or an assembly doesn’t enhance one of those characteristics, it doesn’t serve a real purpose other than to make you feel clever. The pieces of machinery I saw in Shorty crater all had discernible form, fit and function, and that is what made it clear to me I wasn’t just looking at rocks.

  Mechanical debris in Shorty crater.

  Then my eye went to a large, box like object which seemed to have welded venting tubes all around the outside of it. I thought it looked a bit like a big mechanical turkey or even the torso of some formerly functioning device or junction box. I could even see a clevis or fit point at the front where something else might have been attached by a pin.

  Richard noted all this, and then said “Look up.”

  That’s when I saw it, just above the turkey-torso like object. Something that absolutely should not have been there. A head. A disembodied head in a crater. On the Moon. Data’s head.

  More mechanical debris.

  The “Turkey.”

  To say my head exploded when I saw this object is to do the opening scene in the movie “Scanners” an injustice. I literally could not believe it. But after looking at photo after photo of it, each more intriguing and revealing than the next, I could no longer deny the reality of it, especially considering the extensive mechanical context it was found in. There was somebody’s head on the surface of the Moon. Or at least, something’s head on the surface of the Moon…

  After a brief discussion, we were in quick agreement that neither this object nor anything else in Shorty crater could be of biological origin. The airless vacuum and harsh radiation environment would have long before broken down any kind of living tissue into dust. No, to have survived this long on the exposed lunar surface, this and everything else we were seeing had to be mechanical in origin. So it had to be something mechanical—a robot’s head. That mind blowing conclusion was only confirmed by color enhanced close-ups of what we were now calling “Data’s Head,” in honor of the android character from the dismal Star Trek–The Next Generation TV series.

  You see, under color enhancement, it’s easy to see that Data’s Head has a bright red stripe painted on it. Obviously, that’s a feature most “rocks” don’t come with. The red stripe is plainly visible even without enhancement on several photos Schmitt took of the interior of Shorty crater, in spite of the claims by some critics that it isn’t really there, or can’t be reproduced.

  As I looked at this undeniable mechanical artifact on the surface of the Moon, I kept thinking back to the episode of Star Trek–The Next Generation where the crew of the Enterprise finds the android lieutenant Data’s severed head in excavated ruins in San Francisco. Was this object somehow symbolically connected? Was this some artifact left by the Ancient Alien civilization that once flourished on Earth’s Moon? And if it was, did Schmitt and Cernan see it? And more importantly, did they bring it back? They certainly could have, as it is exactly the same size as a human head and would have fit into the sample bags fairly easily. The question of whether they had the off camera time to retrieve it is something else entirely.

  The interior of Shorty crater. Data’s head is at the top middle.

  To be sure, they continued to have opportunities to retrieve ancient alien technology from the surface of the Moon even after Shorty crater and Data’s Head. There are photos from the third day and EVA-3 which also show what appear to be pumps, engines or some other kinds of mechanical debris scattered all over the Taurus-Littrow valley. Did they collect some of them and bring them back?

  Composite close-up of Data’s Head.

  NASA frame AS17-140-21409.

  In the end, all we know for certain about the Apollo 17 mission is that it was unusual in almost every way, from its landing site to the lack of photos of the interior of Nansen to the myste
rious and still classified “Chapel Bell” experiment. But from the vantage point of 40 years in the past, it certainly appears that this mission was designed to investigate and retrieve technology left over from the Ancient Alien habitation of the Moon in the distant past. The question is, to what end?

  1 http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17pp-geosynth.pdf

  2 http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/images17.html#20942

  3 http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17.photidx.pdf

  “Rock and Roll on the Ocean of Storms” by Alan Bean.

  Clementine composite image of Tycho crater.

  Apollo 16 astronaut John Young saluting the American flag on the surface of the Moon.

  Enhanced color image of the crater Proclus from Earth-based telescope. Color variations and intensity are caused by bending of light through immense, glass-like lunar structures suspended over Mare Crisium region.

  Color enhanced image of Lunar Rover and Shorty crater. Note Orange soil, pink mountains and blue rock outcroppings. Colors are the result of prismatic light scattering from overhead glass ruins.

  4-frame composite of ‘Data’s Head’ from Jack Schmitt’s panorama of Shorty crater. Red stripe appears to be painted on metallic surface of the artifact.

  Orange soil near Shorty Crater. Note lavender rocks nearby and pink mountains in background. (NASA)

  Image of mechanical device near the Lunar Rover from AS17-140-21409.

  CHAPTER 8

  CLEMENTINE, TYCHO

  AND THE FACTORY

  Before we wrap up, I feel it’s important to look at some other research and some of the newer missions that have more recently returned to the Moon.

  In 1994, the Naval Research Laboratory, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and NASA jointly sent a probe named Clementine to the Moon and took thousands of new images of our only satellite for the first time in decades. We’ll look at some of those images in a bit, but what was most provocative about Clementine was that “she” carried an excellent, high resolution digital imager which was state of the art for the time and could have afforded views in much greater definition than any of the 1960s and 70s Apollo era missions did. Unfortunately, in a move that brings up all of the “military intelligence” jokes I can think of, they didn’t get any hi-res images to speak of. At least, none that they’ve released to the public. The supposed reason? They left the lens cap on.

  I’m not kidding.

  The ostensible reason for this oversight was that the NRL had scheduled Clementine to rendezvous with an asteroid named 1620 Geographos, and they wanted to “save” the hi-res imager for that mission. As a result, most of the hi-res images available to the public which funded the mission are pitch black. However, there were some interesting medium resolution images taken, and a couple of them got me started on lunar anomaly hunting way back in the day.

  Clementine image LBA5904z. 193. Bright star-like object at top is the planet Venus.

  The first image was actually taken with Clementine’s low-resolution “star tracker” camera, which was used to navigate and position the spacecraft in its orbit around the Moon. On its 193rd orbit (April 1st, 1994, to be exact), Clementine was instructed to take an image of the lunar disk as the sun was receding behind it, in order to capture an image of the solar corona. It did that quite adequately. But it also captured something else; a stunning Transient Lunar Phenomena.

  Close-up of Clementine TLP.

  There, right on the edge of the lunar disk and exactly where you’d expect to see a bright specular reflection (if the transparent lunar dome model is correct) was a bona-fide, in your face TLP. Never again would anyone have to debate the reality of the phenomenon. A second image,

  LBA5905z.l93, was taken one second later and confirmed the bright, glowing spec was not just an accident of the imager and that the flare of light lasted for a measureable period of time. Close-ups showed this strange reflection was right on the limb of the terminator, exactly where it would have to be if the glass structure model of the Moon was correct.

  So if nothing else, Clementine had shown us that TLP’s do exist, are still happening and while they remain officially mysterious, this one’s appearance was exactly consistent with the glass lunar dome theory we’ve discussed in this book.

  The truth is, I really didn’t expect (or get) much from Clementine. Its mission and instruments were classified, and after the shenanigans with the hi-res imager, I was not expecting much in terms of the data that would be offered to the public. But then one day in browsing some press release images of the crater Tycho, I got quite a surprise. Tycho has always intrigued me because it such a prominent feature on the lunar disk and it was the location of the Monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. So, given its storied fictional history, I decided to have a look at what was in the bottom of the crater. What I found not only freaked me out, it led to me eventually writing this book.

  The image in question was a mosaic showing the central peak and north rim of the crater in three different wavelengths. The first two wavelengths showed a polygonal fracturing pattern in the floor of the crater, which is pretty normal for an assumed impact crater, and also reflected the different material compositions of rocks in the crater floor. But the third image, taken with Clementine’s Red/Green/Blue (visual) filter showed something quite different. There, mounted on the northeast rim of the crater and overlooking the central peak was some really weird looking stuff.

  Clementine composite image of Tycho crater.

  The Tycho Village.

  My eye was caught by them because they had completely reflective properties than the surrounding terrain, standing out as bright white reflectivity in the false-color image produced by NASA. But it was also their shapes. They looked a whole lot like a pyramid, a couple of buildings and some heavy equipment.

  The Chalet.

  For comparison purposes, I labeled these objects the “Pyramid,” the “Chalet,” the “Geo-dome,” the “Longhorn” and the “Backhoe,” and I called the whole area the “Village.” This does not mean that I am suggesting that these are in fact a backhoe, chalets, or a true pyramid. Remember, Tycho is over 65 miles across, so whatever these objects are they’re immense. In fact they are far too big to likely be what I have labeled them as. However, all these objects stand out based on their brightness relative to the surrounding terrain, their unusual geometric shapes, and their proximity to each other.

  The “Chalet”

  This object I dubbed the “Chalet,” looks somewhat like an A-frame building. Note that it appears to form fit on the left hand side matching the terraced terrain. The roof is also far brighter than the surrounding ground, indicating it is made of a different material. The roof also seems to overhang the flat faced supporting structure, and dark, regularly spaced “windows” are visible in a pattern on the front face. The “chimney” has several dark vertical striations, hinting at some sort of venting system. They are almost certainly not image artifacts, as they end where the chimney meets the roof. The chimney also appears to have a domed tip with a flange.

  The “Geo-Dome”

  The accompanying object, the “Geo-dome” also displays comparably peculiar characteristics. Roughly hexagonal in shape, it too seems to jut from the hillside as if it were the tip of a much larger sub surface object or was actually “dug in” to the side of the hill. It as well has an apparent overhanging roof with an exposed, flat-faced front “wall” facing out to the crater. It also has “windows” similar to the Chalet and a possible entrance at the base. It is set apart from the background by the brightness of the roof and its geodesic shape, similar to late 1970s concepts of solar homes.

  The “Geo-Dome”

  The “Pyramid.”

  The “Pyramid”

  Slightly northwest of the “chalet” is this enigmatic faceted object. Again it is very bright and appears to have a 4-sided pyramidal structure. The direction of the shadows makes determining the details of the underside impossible, but the
object does appear to be generally 4-sided and symmetrical.

  The “Backhoe”

  This object resembles a tractor or bulldozer with a drooping scoop set off to the right. It seems to have an opening in-between the “arm” and the base of the main body. There are cavities beneath the object in shadow, separated by a “post” between them.

  The “arm” seems to be made of as many as 8 individual components. The shadow indicates this is a solid vertical structure and its brightness against the background implies it is not made of the same material as the surrounding terrain.

  The “Backhoe”

  The “Longhorn”

  This looks to be a basically symmetrical object with 2 central “nodes” and curved arms extending from the central body. There appears to be some underlying support just to the left of the right hand curved “arm”, but the central spherical “node” looks to be above the ground, judging by the shadow beneath it.

  Note that is also sits in what appears to be an excavated “pen” or platform. I am not aware of any accepted process that could account for this object forming naturally. In an effort to understand the shape I was seeing, I rendered the object and the pen in a 3D CAD system as I saw its various pieces and components.

  The “Longhorn.’

  Each of these objects on their own could potentially be explained away by some exotic natural process. However, due to their grouping in such a small area and varying visual characteristics, it is unlikely one explanation could encompass them all. These objects all have the look of machinery or constructs, as opposed to the simple boulders and cracks which should dominate this landscape. Indeed, the very geometric complexity of these objects argues for their non-natural origin.